Labor’s Cold War: Local Politics in a Global Context

Examining the impact of American Cold War politics on diverse local arenas, Labor’s Cold War shows that anticommunist challenges reshaped local political cultures and set the stage for new rounds of political contestation. The contributors demonstrate that the anticommunist movement was more diverse, more pervasive, and more sharply and creatively contested than previous studies have shown. Even as the national anticommunist movement strengthened, workers and their allies defended ongoing progressive politics at the local level. Examples include struggles over public housing, expansion of New Deal-style regional development, fair employment, anti discrimination politics of race and ethnicity, and union rights to representation and a voice in wage and price controls. Local political stories from New Mexico, California, Tokyo, Milwaukee, Detroit, St Louis, and Schenectedy provide important alternative perspectives on the transformative power of anticommunism in the postwar period and contribute to an ongoing revision of the history of Cold War America and its political legacies.